Editorial

18th October 1998

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War on crime

In an editorial on the recent Kilinochchi debacle where some 1,500 soldiers are believed to have died, we referred to the notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's remark that while one death is a tragedy, a million deaths are mere statistics.

This week that one death of an Indian bride of a Sri Lankan marine engineer, was indeed tragic and the most gruesome way a woman could die - gang-raped, strangled and dragged some 300 feet to a mud pit at Mutwal in north Colombo.

Gang-rape is one of the most barbaric crimes in any society and thus even the highly anaesthetized Sri Lankan society, indifferent to all the killings going on in the war, appears to have been shocked into horror and revulsion over the Rita Manoharan murder.

The four who committed the offence are known to have been intoxicated with liquor and ganja, making them descend even below the level of brutish beasts.

Equally shocking was the brutal murder of a recent school leaver in a brawl after a Hindu cultural show at S. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia. While the first was the work of some sadists, the other may well turn out to be what could emerge as the tip of an iceberg - internecine rivalry seen among Tamil guerrilla groups spilling over even into the Colombo schools where the intake has swelled since of late due to the war in the North and East.

While all the evidence may not yet be in place, the fact that youth gangs could come around with knives to a school show and call for the national anthem to be sung in Tamil (see The Sunday Times Plus story today) is evidence enough surely for the authorities to take a closer look at what could well be a dangerous trend.

With the Police abandoning routine crime detective work, with law and order being undermined by acts of ruthless and sometimes politically motivated terror, and the CID and NIB chasing Opposition politicians, judges and journalists, South Sri Lanka is rapidly being transformed into a Chicago of the 1930s and North Sri Lanka into a Bosnia or Kosovo of the 1990s.

A few days ago the PA government declared open a Nalanda Ellawala Foundation dedicated to the eradication of political violence. But only last Saturday a UNP organiser for Attanagalla, a lady, was physically attacked and her meeting disrupted by goons. This happened in what we may call the pocket-borough of the President who is also the head of the Police and the Armed Forces.

No inquiry or arrests have yet been made.

They say that history repeats itself and it seems that the notorious Attanagalla Doctrine when peaceful satyagrahis were assaulted nearly a quarter century ago has repeated itself.

So what more can we expect? The situation is so bad that the UNP women's wing is to hold a protest meeting on Wednesday but they won't tell where for fear that they might be attacked again.

Shouldn't the Nalanda Ellawala Foundation then begin work with what happened at Attanagalla last week? The recent UNP meeting at Eppawela and Anamaduwa have been disrupted by political goon squads. The police are asked to look the other way or to keep a Nelsonian eye on things-one eye closed to PA violence and one eye open to UNP violence.

With a number of deserters from the Army at large, (See our Special Assignment on page 6) and the numbers of jobless youth on the increase, together with the rising cost of living in the country, the influx of narcotics and the absence of routine policing, what we see are the perfect ingredients for an increase in crimes. No wonder the law and order situation in Sri Lanka is seen drifting further and further away beyond the reach of the long-arm of the law.

This is a country where a former IGP's house was burgled. While ironically the law in this country appears to be a respecter of persons and that is how it should be, the underworld, appears to be no respecter of persons.

Political Column

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